1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the aggregation of facsimile communications technology, and more particularly, to the enablement of remote access and operations of this technology.
2. Description of Related Art
Facsimile document imaging technology has been commercially available dating back to the early 1980's. Scanning an image into a digital representation and communicating that over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) via a dedicated hardware device is a well understood and widely used technology. As the popularity of this technology grew and became commonly adopted by business and consumers for rapid distribution of documents and information, to further reduce costs, there was a need to develop technology that provided simple aggregation of facsimile communications into a technology known as a FAX Server (FIG. 1). This technology is described in great detail in such documents as U.S. Pat. No. 5,552,901 (Kikuchi, et al) and Japanese patent 03-044230 (Tadashi). These improvements allowed consumers to centralize facsimile resources on a corporate network within the organization, enabling desktop computing platforms and other multifunction printing and scanning fax products to take advantage of facsimile services without requiring dedicated fax hardware at each station. FIG. 1 shows the conventional deployment of fax server technology to anyone schooled in the art. Briefly, for outgoing documents, fax servers (100) accept documents in a variety of different electronic formats generated by different applications or devices (130,140,150) and potentially converts them to a necessary facsimile format (typically a black and white image) within specialized hardware and software (100, 110) required for subsequent transmittal over telephone devices, networks and services (160,120,170) to at least one peer receiving facsimile system (180). For inbound facsimiles, fax servers (100) receive the inbound facsimile information over telephone devices, networks, and services (160,120,170) from peer facsimile devices (180) and potentially convert and store the received transmission for latter retrieval or forward the received information via a number of different electronic formats, to applications (130,150) such as email, or purpose built devices (140). This technology is also well understood by persons who are schooled in the art.
Fax server technology is not without its own set of limitations and requirements. Traditionally, these fax serves (100) are under the purview of a business's network and/or telecom administrator. This set of individuals must not only possess the correct knowledge for operating these devices, but interfacing the technology to both the local computing network infrastructure (130,140,150) as well as interfacing/provisioning the fax server equipment (110) to the telephone company's appropriate type of PSTN/PBX circuit such as PRI/T1/E1/analog line, etc. (120,160,170). Given these requirements, the total cost of ownership of these systems, including the recurring fees to interconnect with the telephone carrier network (170) may be prohibitively expensive for many organizations, leaving them at a significant disadvantage. Furthermore, with the plethora of newer voice communications options such as Voice over IP, many businesses are opting to use alternative methods for interconnecting their voice services, not all of which meet the stringent timing requirements of a facsimile transmission.
In view of the circumstances and limitations of the prior art, as well as considering the migration by businesses of network resources to cloud computing environments, it would be highly desirable to provide a solution that transparently addresses the characteristics of facsimile services, further reduces the total cost of ownership of these systems, and maintain compatibility with existing fax enable applications (130,150) and devices (140,100) even when deployed over non-traditional telephony networks.